So it would seem that in all the rush to make a quick remark about Jeremy Lin showing signs that he may not be the second coming of Kareem Abdul Jabbar (or whatever famous past player that played the same position as Lin) someone decided to say something that in this day and age they should know better than to say about an Asian person.
Apparently ESPN's mobile site ran a headline that said "Chink in the Armor" about a less than stellar performance by the rising star.
Honestly more than likely the person that ran this (its already been taken down an and apology has been issued) didn't even think about the implications of using that word in reference to an Asian person. I bet its not the first time someone has used "Chink in the Armor" to describe a rising or current star athlete that's on a hot streak that shows a little bit of imperfection.
And that's the problem. They didn't think.
You have to take that stuff into consideration when writing. If this had been LeBron James and DeWayne Wade back when the Heat lost the NBA finals how well do you think it would be taken if someone had said, "Boy I bet the folks in Miami are ready to hang LeBron and Wade for losing the Finals."? That shit would not have flown. And I bet one could think of more examples but let's not get bogged down in that.
As I said the problem here is that the writer didn't even stop to consider, "Is it okay to use that word in reference to an Asian person?". Racism hasn't just disappeared and now people are free to use whatever words they want under the impression that they no longer hurt people. Its still there, it still hurts (in fact that Huffington post I linked to mentions that Lin has said that he was called that during his college years at Harvard), and we still have to think about it.
